Counter-Strike
Counter-Strike (CS) is a tactical first-person shooter originating from a mod by Minh "Gooseman" Le and Jess Cliffe (then-named Half-Life: Counter-Strike) before being acquired by Valve Corporation. It was first commercially released in 1999 for PC by Sierra Entertainment, and later via Steam in 2003 as the latest version, Counter-Strike 1.6. Counter-Strike pits a team of Counter-Terrorists against a team of Terrorists in a series of rounds. Each round is won by either completing the mission objective or eliminating the opposing force. The game is currently the most played Half-Life modification in terms of players, according to GameSpy. Gameplay Counter-Strike is a first-person shooter in which players join either the terrorist or counter-terrorist team (or become a spectator). Each team attempts to complete their mission objective and/or eliminate the opposing team. Each round starts with the two teams spawning simultaneously, usually at opposite ends of the map from each other. A player can choose to play as one of eight different default character models (four for each side, although Counter-Strike: Condition Zero added two extra models, bringing the total to ten). Players are generally given a few seconds before the round begins (known as "freeze time") to prepare and buy equipment, during which they cannot attack or walk/move (a player can still take damage, having the player drop from a certain height during freeze time was the only way somebody could control the players starting "HP"). They can return to the buy area within a set amount of time to buy more equipment (some custom maps included neutral "buy zones" that could be used by both teams). Once the round has ended, surviving players retain their equipment for use in the next round; players who were killed begin the next round with the basic default starting equipment. Standard monetary bonuses are awarded for winning a round, losing a round, killing an enemy, being the first to instruct a hostage to follow, rescuing a hostage or planting the bomb. The scoreboard displays team scores in addition to statistics for each player: name, kills, deaths, and Latency (ping) (in milliseconds). The scoreboard also indicates whether a player is dead, carrying the bomb (on bomb maps), or is the VIP (on assassination maps), although information on players on the opposing team is hidden from a player until his/her death, as this information can be important. Killed players become "spectators" for the duration of the round; they cannot change their names until they spawn (come alive) again, text chat cannot be sent to or received from live players; and voice chat can only be received from live players and not sent to them (unless the server cvar sv_alltalk is set to 1). Spectators are generally able to watch the rest of the round from multiple selectable views, although some servers disable some of these views to prevent dead players from relaying information about living players to their teammates through alternative media (most notably voice in the case of Internet cafes and VoIP programs such as TeamSpeak or Ventrilo). This form of cheating is known as "ghosting". Development Counter-Strike originated as a total conversion modification of Half-Life led by then-high school students Minh "Gooseman" Le and Jess Cliffe. After releasing in regular beta versions as Half-Life: Counter-Strike, the game and some of its developers were acquired by Valve and it was released commercially via software. After release, patches have been released through WON and later Steam. After version 1.6 was released in 2003 via Steam, Valve started closing down WON servers in favor of Steam. Release When Counter-Strike was published by Sierra Entertainment, it was bundled with Team Fortress Classic, Half-Life: Opposing Force multiplayer, and the Wanted, Half-Life: Absolute Redemption and Firearms mods. On 24 March 1999, Planet Half-Life opened its Counter-Strike section. Within two weeks, the site had received 10,000 hits. On June 18, 1999, the first public beta of Counter-Strike was released, followed by numerous further "beta" releases. On April 12, 2000, Valve announced that the Counter-Strike developers and Valve had teamed up. Counter-Strike 1.0 was released around Christmas 2000. On January 25, 2003, a world wide competition was held by Valve and hosted by Dell. Numerous Dell desktops and laptops were awarded in the competition which attracted over 10,000 participants. The competition was held over a two week period, with the winner ("b0b") being announced on February 15 on Valve's website. On 15 September, the current version, 1.6, was released. Counter-Strike was originally played online through the WON gaming service. The last non-Steam version of Counter-Strike (version 1.5) can still be downloaded from sites such as FilePlanet. Due to the closure of WON in 2004, forcing players to switch to Steam, part of the player community responded by creating WON2. In March 2007, Valve implemented mandatory advertisements through Steam in official maps and in the game's GUI overhead. Customers have expressed frustration with the ads, including an over 200 page thread on Valve's official forums, saying that they violate original terms of service and distract from the game. The thread was later deleted by an unknown moderator. Mods and scripts Though Counter-Strike is itself a mod, it has developed its own community of script writers and mod creators. Some mods add bots, while others remove features of the game, and others create different modes of play. Some of the mods give server administrators more flexible and efficient control over his or her server. "Admin plugins", as they are mostly referred as, have become very popular. There are some mods which affect gameplay heavily, such as Gun Game, where players start with a basic pistol and must score kills to receive better weapons, and Zombie Mod, where one team consists of Zombies and must "spread the infection" by killing the other team (using only the knife). There are also the Superhero and Warcraft 3 mods which mix the first-person gameplay of Counter-Strike with an experience system, allowing a player to become more powerful as they continue to play. The game is also highly customizable on the player's end, allowing the user to install or even create their own custom skins, HUDs, sprites, and sound effects, given the proper tools. Cheating Counter-Strike has been a prime target for exploitation by cheaters since its release. In-game, cheating is often referred to as "hacking" in reference to external programs executed by the user. Typical cheats are: * Wallhacks, which allow the player to see through walls. These work by displaying objects that are normally obscured or replacing opaque game textures with semitransparent ones, allowing the hacker to see enemies before they would normally be in view. As the engine only renders the immediate area around the player, this does not allow a player to see the entire map at once. * Speedhacks, which give the player increased speed. These work by sending false synchronization data to servers. * No recoil, which keeps the player's gun shooting straight on the y axis without a kickback by removing gun physics. * No spread is used to make a player's gun shoot straight along the x axis. * Aimbots, which helps the player aim at enemies. These work by moving the player's view to anticipate an enemy's position. This is similar to auto-aim * ESP, which shows textual information about the enemy, such as, health, name, and distance, and also information about weapons lying around the map, which could be missed without the hack * Barrel hack, which shows a line that depicts where the enemy is looking * Anti-flash and anti-smoke, which remove the flashbang and smoke grenade effect. This branched off the wall hack. As a result, Valve has implemented an anti-cheat system called Valve Anti-Cheat (VAC). Players cheating on a VAC enabled server risk having their account permanently banned from all VAC secured servers. Reception Retail sales of the Counter-Strike franchise as of December 2008: * Counter-Strike: 4.2 million * Counter-Strike Condition Zero: 2.9 million * Counter-Strike Source: 2.1 million Legacy Counter-Strike is famous for the culture surrounding it, which includes everything from professional gamers and leagues, to excessive cheating and disruptive behavior. Certain professional teams (such as SK Gaming, alternate aTTaX, mousesports and fnatic) have come to earn a living out of it, while other clans and community based groups neither lose nor earn money via member donations which are self-sustaining in return for administrator rights in servers involved in the community. Counter-Strike remains extremely popular to this day. There are currently professional online leagues supporting Counter-Strike, such as the Cyberathlete Amateur League (CAL), and CyberEvolution, a pay-to-play league. Various LAN tournaments are held throughout the world, with the largest being the Cyberathlete Professional League (CPL), the Electronic Sports World Cup (ESWC), the World e-Sports Games (WEG), and the World Cyber Games (WCG). Championship matches in these events are televised with commentary and analysis. Half-Life and other contemporary games took full advantage of hardware graphics acceleration in the late 1990s, replacing earlier software-rendered games such as Quake. The continued popularity of Counter-Strike has meant that older video cards such as the 3dfx Voodoo3, ATI Rage 128, and Nvidia RIVA TNT2 remain useful. There have been a multitude of games claimed by their developers, reviewers and fans to be "Counter-Strike killers," but none have seriously been able to dent its overall popularity. Server statistics in 2002 showed that Counter-Strike servers outnumbered their Battlefield, Unreal Tournament 2003 or Quake III first-person shooter counterparts at least 3 to 1. In China's northern port city Tianjin, some police officers have used Counter-Strike as a tool for tactical training. Controversy Counter-Strike faced controversy in April 2007 when Jack Thompson, now a disbarred attorney from Florida, predicted that the perpetrator of the Virginia Tech Massacare had been trained to kill in the game, well before Seung Hi-Choo (the shooter) was identified. News sources originally stated that Seung-Hui Cho only played the game in high school, however no video games whatsoever were found in the gunman's dorm room, and there is no evidence that he ever played Counter-Strike. On January 17, 2008, a Brazilian federal court order prohibiting all sales of Counter-Strike and Everquest and imposing the immediate withdrawal of these from all stores began to be enforced. The federal Brazilian judge of the judiciary section, ordered the ban in October 2007 because, according to him, the games "bring immanent stimulus to the subversion of the social order, attempting against the democratic and rightful state and against the public safety. As of June 18, 2009, a regional federal court order lifting the prohibition on the sale of Counter-Strike was published. The game is now being sold again in Brazil Gallery General Mainmenu_cs.png|The main menu. Box_art_cs.png|Front cover. Official screenshots 0000000132.800x600.png 0000000133.800x600.png 0000000134.800x600.png 0000000135.800x600.png 0000000136.800x600.png 0000002537.800x600.png 0000002538.800x600.png 0000002539.800x600.png 0000002540.800x600.png 0000002541.600x338.png 0000002542.800x600.png 0000002543.800x600.png See also *''Counter-Strike: Condition Zero'' *''Condition Zero: Deleted Scenes'' *''Counter-Strike: Source'' External links * * * Category:Games Category:Counter-Strike